Rep. Paul Tonko accused Republicans Monday of engaging in “stall tactics” that will make it difficult to pass clean energy legislation in the months leading up to an election year.
“That is not leadership. That is not vision. They happen to be stall tactics … to hold back the tide of change that is already well underway,” the long-standing Democrat from New York said in an address to the National Hydropower Association’s annual conference in Washington.
His words could be taken as both a challenge and a warning about legislation to spur clean energy development. The hydropower group’s primary focus this year is to get legislation passed that fixes a host of regulatory issues confronting the industry.
Tonko said Republicans appear to be digging in their heels in support for fossil fuels, which will hold back energy legislation aimed at bringing down the cost of renewables and other forms of energy to spur jobs and infrastructure development.
The push for clean energy “isn’t about a war on coal, any more than the adoption of automobiles was a war on horses,” Tonko said. “This is about market dynamics. It is a transition being driven by technological change, market factors, consumer preferences and to use [energy] more efficiently and certainly more cleanly.”
Tonko accused Republicans of wasting time by opposing the president’s climate agenda and EPA climate rules, which are known as the Clean Power Plan. “With or without the Clean Power Plan this industry must modernize and adapt,” he said.
Tonko serves on the Energy & Commerce Committee and is known as a major proponent of alternative energy technology.
“[It] startles me … that there are still those that are … deniers [of science] out there.” Tonko said, saying the country should be “moving forward and not holding on to some of the failed policies of the past,” he said.
He warned that the GOP’s focus on paring back budgets for clean energy innovation could hurt the economy at a time when new sources of energy and jobs are needed.
Tonko said Congress managed to pass energy efficiency legislation in the last month, and there are bills being teed up in both the House and Senate to devise an even broader energy package. But those efforts are likely to stall because the focus is not on innovation, but keeping fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy.
The Energy & Commerce Committee put forth an energy and infrastructure agenda earlier in the year with items that have good bipartisan appeal, “but so far the committee … has not diverged from consideration of partisan bills that largely reinforce our continued reliance on fossil fuels.”
